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Conan O’Brien has shared how Oscar-winning actor Robin Williams helped him after he was fired from The Tonight Show in 2010.
O’Brien briefly hosted NBC’s Tonight Show for two seasons following his tenure hosting the network’s Late Night show from 1993 to 2009. He was dismissed from the former in 2010 when host Jay Leno decided to return.
“I was lucky enough to have some great interactions with Robin Williams before he passed,” he said on his Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend podcast.
“One of the most memorable examples to me is when I went through my whole Tonight Show debacle. Finally, the show is done, and I don’t know if I have a career anymore.
“What am I gonna do next? I’m lying on the floor in the living room of my house, and my phone rings, and I pick it up, and it’s Robin Williams. I don’t even know how he got my phone number”.
The presenter said Williams asked him, “‘How are you holding up, chief?’ And he said, you know, ‘You’re gonna be fine, you’re gonna be great.’”
The Good Will Hunting star and O’Brien shared a passion for cycling, and as O’Brien licked his wounds, Williams ordered a cruiser for him, sending him to a Santa Monica bike shop to pick it up.
“And I said, ‘What?’ And he said, ‘No, no, no, just head on down there. Ride around, you’ll feel better,’” said O’Brien. “And I went down and it was a Colnago, which is a very nice bike.
“And he said, ‘I told him to paint it in all these crazy Irish colors.’ I get down there and it’s the most ugliest — I mean, it was just greens and shamrocks and everything. And he was like, ‘You’re going to like that bike, chief. Don’t worry about it.’”
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Reflecting on the experience, O’Brien said, “I thanked him many, many times. I just couldn’t believe that he was thinking about me.”
Williams died by suicide in 2014, aged 63.
In April earlier this year, O’Brien returned to The Tonight Show for the first time since his abrupt exit.
Speaking with current host Jimmy Fallon, O’Brien, 60, admitted that it felt “weird to come back”.
In 2012, O’Brien told The Hollywood Reporter that while he still had latent resentment, he acknowledged a one-time “amazing partnership with NBC”.
“There are moments of, ‘What the hell happened? Why did that person do that or say that?’ But there’s also lot of, ‘OK, let’s file this under There’s A Lot I Can’t Control,’” he said.
